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Abstract

The study examines the circumstances that have continually plagued the Nigerian state to remain in its doldrums of underdevelopment after five decades of self-governance and four decades of oil driven economy. The nation has not been able to catapult itself from a Third World to that of developed nation such as South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia - all of which are less naturally endowed than Nigeria. The nation's economy has been supported by oil over the last 40 years. However, successive administrations both the generals and civilian rule have continued to follow similar patterns of squandering vast resources of the golden era of the nation's prosperity in terms of oil windfall that could have contributed to a significant socioeconomic transformation of the nation. In the meantime, most of the infrastructures—roads, bridges, railways airports, seaports, education—are in a state of perpetual disrepair. At this stage of Nigeria's self-governance, the electrical power fails in an unnerving frequency, so much so that most of the manufacturing companies have been relocated to other West African countries. In the face of this, there is a wholesale looting of the nation's treasury, and this state of affairs have been emboldened by the poorly functioning bureaucracies and weak public administration that does not hold public officials accountable for their malfeasance. As a consequence, today, Nigeria with its enormous resources and oil wealth remains significantly less industrialized than other West African countries of Ghana or Sierra Leone with no adequate resources like Nigeria. The Nigerian state was underdeveloped in 1960 when it was decolonized from Britain, and it remains essentially the same 50 years later.

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